Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SLS And Orion

The Senate Launch System is four years old (if you count from when NASA actually rolled out the design — it’s more like five years when it was first stipulated in the NASA authorization bill). Some thoughts at the time from Jerry Pournelle.

And Stephen Smith has a history of Orion (the capsule, not the nuclear-powered spacecraft, which just slipped another two years, and even NASA is no longer pretending will ever go to Mars):

SpaceX spent 100% of its own money to develop the Falcon 9 booster and the upcoming Falcon Heavy. The cargo Dragon capsule cost $850 million to develop; $400 million was NASA seed money, while $450 million was SpaceX money. It was only four years from SpaceX receiving its first commercial cargo contract in August 2006 to the first test flight in December 2010. The first Dragon delivery was in May 2012. Dragon was designed with the eventual goal of using it for people, so the crewed Dragon V2 would seem likely to avoid much of the design delays that might plague other commercial crew companies.

Orion and SLS have no urgency, because there’s no profit motive. The contractors get paid regardless of their pace or success; it’s required by law. Their lobbyists ensure through generous campaign contributions that Congress will prohibit any competition. Representatives of NASA space centers populate the space authorization and appropriations committees in the House and the Senate; their priority, sometimes stated explicitly, is to protect the taxpayer-funded government jobs in their districts and states.

Maybe, someday, we’ll actually see NASA crew climb into an Orion capsule atop a Space Launch System booster at Pad 39B. But it will be tens of billions of dollars after we see commercial crew companies do it for far cheaper.

Yup. I’d bet it never happens. It certainly shouldn’t.

Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Orion

15 Comments

Official schedule just slipped to April 2023 for EM2. Like Constellation, it’s slipping more than a year per year. The program began in 2005. That would make it eighteen years.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Next President And Space

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Another piece at The Space Review I missed last week was Jeff Foust’s assessment of the presidential field in the context of space policy.

Bottom line: None of them are going to be a JFK. Which isn’t surprising, because even JFK wasn’t the JFK of space-advocate fantasies. We live in a democratic Republic, and we’re not going to do Apollo again, to Mars or anywhere else. The best we can hope for is a president who recognizes the value of high-leverage space technology needed to reduce costs, and will fund those things necessary to support it during his or her term.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Space, Technology and Society

The Martian And Real Mars Missions

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I’m a little behind on my reading of The Space Review, but last week, Eric Sterner cautioned (as Keith Cowing has been doing repeatedly) space enthusiasts not to imagine that the movie will somehow sell NASA programs or budgets. Note the discussion about lack of redundancy in comments. Weir’s scenario assumes that NASA is going to do Apollo to Mars. The purpose of my Kickstarter project is to show why that shouldn’t and probably won’t ever happen. And there’s also this:

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Mark Whittington

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Isn’t this cute? He still imagines we can (or should) do Apollo again.

[Update a while later]

Interesting timing on that Whittington piece. I just got off the phone with David Livingston, and one of the things I told his listeners was to stop trying to do Apollo again. Particularly because the Apollo they imagined, in which the nation was united behind a big goal in space, never happened.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Aerojet Rocketdyne ULA?

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This seems like a really weird story:

Rocket engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne has offered to buy launch services provider United Launch Alliance from Lockheed Martin and Boeing for at least $2 billion, an industry source told SpaceNews Sept. 8.

The unsolicited bid is the latest twist in what has been a topsy-turvy year for ULA, the primary U.S. government launch services provider.

First, this begs the question of whether the parents would be willing to sell. I’m not sure they’d want to give up control, given the strategic issues involved. An unfettered ULA could be almost as disruptive to their government business (particularly SLS) as SpaceX has been.

Of course, a purchase by AJR would probably pretty effectively fetter them in other ways. The only reason for the company to do this is pure desperation. If Tory gets his way, and they build Vulcan/ACES, and end Atlas, Delta and Centaur, and phase out use of the RL-10 as well (which they’ve been wanting to do for years), AJR is pretty much out of business. But it would be acquiring and preserving launch systems that are already known to be uncompetitive on the future market, and it still needs money to build the AR-1, the RD-180 replacement. Congress seems willing to throw them money for that. But the problem is, even if the taxpayer pays for development, the vehicle itself will remain uncompetitive against SpaceX, since even with the development subsidy, manufacturing costs will be higher than the current price for the RD-180 from Russia.

Which makes this story at Engadget pretty funny:

United Launch Alliance is a joint-venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing that launches spy and navigation satellites for the Pentagon and Air Force. Now, the firm is the subject of a $2 billion bid from engine business Aerojet Rocketdyne, a company that’s been snubbed in its attempts to power the Atlas V. If the government’s shadowy army of intelligence analysts and accountants approve the deal, it could create a new aerospace behemoth that could leave Elon Musk shivering out in the cold.

Say what? If I were Elon, I’d be cheering this on, for reasons stated above. What I’d be worried about would be a counteroffer from Bezos, because this deal leaves Blue Origin out in the cold, in terms of suddenly having to develop their own rocket for the BE-4. I’ll bet he’s thinking about it. Of course, as I said above, this all presumes that Boeing and Lockmart are willing to sell. It was reportedly an unsolicited bid.

[Update a few minutes later]

Yes, as noted in comments, it’s a third higher than their market cap. And it’s just an opening bid, no way they’d get it for that price. It might be possible to do some kind of mezzanine M&A deal, but it sure looks like a bad bet to me.

[Mid-afternoon update]